Archive for the ‘Social Justice’ Category

I’ve been following a lot of youtubers recently, many of whom cover things on the topics of culture/SJW progressivism in society from angles and in ways more detailed than mainstream media ever could.

Appabend is the handle of a young (late teens-20s) Indonesian youtuber who mostly focuses on comic books, video games, manga/anime, and other aspects of pop/nerd culture.

He’s part of that group of people who were otherwise just enjoying their hobbies and diversions and minding their own business and then got mugged by games journalists during Gamergate.

He also provides a different non-Western perspective on Western pop-culture – and here he covers a little side-story of an Islamic ideologue (I’ll be kind and stick with his term for the guy) who got a job with Marvel comics, then went out and inserted subtle phrases and codes that aren’t so subtle if you’re aware of them… all because the Islamic bigot ideologue hated the mayor of Jakarta.

He frequently makes the point that SJWs ruin everything – and specifically they ruin comics by forcing SJW demands in that people don’t want. The example is frequently that a beloved character who’s decades and decades old is warped into some SJW lunacy for the sake of SJW lunacy… when a new character could be introduced with no offense to the fans. When the SJWs complain about people hating the new characters, they blame the audience rather than acknowledge they screwed up the characters.

As an anecdotal example, I used to buy a few different comics frequently. I followed Batman during the late 90s-early 2000s when they did the Batman No-Man’s-Land arc, I followed Top 10, Powers, a bit of the Transformers/GI Joe reboots, and to probably no one’s surprise still reading this, Punisher (after the 2000 or so Marvel Knights/MAX reboot that grounded the character again). I dropped most of them by the early 2000s, but followed Punisher for several years, then stopped around the late 2000s when the decision was made to have the Punisher put on a Confederate flag t-shirt and go to the desert southwest to fight “Hatemonger” as a propaganda lesson from the publishers in “anyone who wants secure borders is a giant white racist”. And just like that, a comic alienated a core reader.

This was well before the current wave of SJW influence in comics, this was more the “NY/NYC/big-city leftist who knows nothing of the outside world and simply stereotypes the rest of the nation as racist hicks in flyover country”… much like we see with the demonization of Trump voters today and of Bush voters 16 & 12 years ago. It was an earlier generation of SJW-ing, but that was enough that Marvel alienated a reader – and I doubt I’m the only one.

How or why would there be 14 articles published decrying gamers as horrible, wretched, misogynistic, angry misanthropes? Well, that’s explained by the newest revelation.

Remember JournoList? That secret leftist group of reporters who decided how to set a narrative across the media in order to favor Barack Obama and leftist causes by collaborating behind the scenes?

Well in the video game world, there’s GameJournoPros – another mailing list that seems to be mostly left-leaning “journalists” – just this time the social justice warrior variety who exist in video game journalism to bludgeon you with their club of moral superiority.

Despite the #NotYourShield folks of all stripes, colors, creeds, orientations and varieties saying “hey, video gamers aren’t just straight white males, so stop demonizing all gamers in my name as a _____”, the game “journalist” SJWs continue their assault, violently rejecting any calls for transparency, objectivity, and an end to the incestuous corruption of developers and journalists colluding with each other.

Broadly speaking, gamers don’t want to hear some social commentary on how “E3 is full of white male protagonists again and you’re racist because of it”, nor do they want to hear about how Princess Peach’s very existence is sexist or how Birdo is insensitive to cross-gendered reptiles.

Casual gamers find it obnoxious, preachy, and irritating, and more serious gamers find it… obnoxious, preachy, and irritating. And now that game “journalists” behavior is being shown to be a collaborative effort for personal gain (as well as financial gain), it’s pretty gone quite a bit beyond that.

In the gaming world, if a game offends you, you don’t buy it. It’s that simple. The market will correct itself. If you like good games and don’t really care that Cloud Strife’s haircut is offensive to the folically challenged, then you certainly don’t need someone going out of their way to scream about it and networking with their fellow game “journalists” to get the game shut down.

You certainly don’t need some games “journalist” using their connections and networks and going out of their way to make sure a game doesn’t get produced, doesn’t get distributed and doesn’t get sold because they find it offensive, or because they want to spike a game in favor of their developer friend’s game – and they’ll use their social justice/political correct angle to get that other game spiked.

Discussing the topic and demanding a reform of games journalism has resulted in predictable responses – including those 14 stories above.

But it’s a matter of course – they’re social justice activists who use the “you’re a racist/sexist/homophobe” as a way to demand that you shut up.

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As I’ve noted before, the whole GamerGate issue is a microcosm of society where the leftist social justice warrior types have taken it as their personal mission to force everyone to knuckle under to their demands. It’s pretty similar to what we see in politics and broader culture every time some leftist social justice activist claims some mantle of the oppressed and demands special treatment for it – while simultaneously never doing anything for the oppressed party (because then they’d lose that specialness to make demands). We’re currently seeing the same thing happen to the NFL, where a handful of dirtbag players (and possibly team organizations that covered for them) have prompted activist groups to target the entire NFL, going so far as to make demands that have in at least one case specifically hurt (financially) the people they claim to want to help. It’s all part of a broader cultural push, but that’s for another post.

Despite (or rather because of) all of the pontificating by left-leaning social justice types in the game industry about oppression, the easiest way for talentless hacks to break into the indie gaming industry is to associate with the sort of hipster liberal types that are getting all the publicity for their oppression. And worse yet, they get in over people with actual skills. …

Let’s be completely honest: most women don’t play Quake III. Most of those few women like me who actually like first person shooters, grand strategy, space sims, and all those other genres that make up “core” gaming don’t care if they can play as a female protagonist, or if the girls are wearing skimpy outfits, or if you have to rescue the princess. They like the exact same things as men who like those games, and they just want good games, nothing more nothing less. And most of them feel that all this rambling on about representation is distracting from the real issue: big developers and publishers are making shitty games for mass appeal instead of the kind of awesome games we played growing up. When you distract from that to rant about what is literally imaginary misogyny you’re hurting women like me who just want good games.

Now, onto Chivalry, and not that archaic concept of men having different authorities and responsibilities than women, but the game Chivalry: Medieval Warfare.

The GamerGate story has parallels to something that happened a couple years ago to Torn Banner Studios, the small independent company that makes a cathartically violent Chivalry.

There was a very interesting response to Chivalry, and one of the few things I read about it in video game media/reporting (though that’s mostly because I care more if the game’s fun than what some reporter says – and Chivalry is a fun game, though obviously people have different tastes).

A forum member asked for female characters to be included in the game, and the developer said no, because he thought that an already violent game with the addition of female characters would lead to a horrible reaction in the fan community – basically that there would be verbal abuse by hyped-up male players playing a violent game. He was pretty sure he knew the audience for his kind of game, and saw that as potential trouble. As written by one of the devs:

This is a tough one, I actually think that adding female characters to a game like this would make it appeal less to females. Which at first sounds strange, but from my experience of the general maturity level of the internet and the unfortunately male dominated FPS market… I don’t think that it would add to the experience for women or men given the actions that would likely occur.

Hopefully that helps you understand why we decided not to go that route… I am totally fine with women fighting, but its the fact that it would probably overall harm the way the community would play the game that has me concerned.

And of course it was picked up by Kotaku as an example of sexism. Yes, the same horribly biased, social-justice demanding Kotaku that’s been central to GamerGate. Their article, while short, existed to tell Torn Banner that they were wrong, because sexism or something. It’s a very short article from two years ago, but one that exists solely to say that a developer is wrong because he won’t put women characters in his game.

Just for reference, this is gameplay from Chivalry (don’t click play if you don’t want to see knights dismembered):

Now, in a game where one teamplay mode has one team literally killing off a village full of defenseless screaming peasants:

Would it really be a good idea to have screaming women involved in that, too?

If women were included, wouldn’t the response be that Chivalry is a game that hates women and literally rends them limb from limb?

Frankly, the developer made a hyperviolent game – one that is wonderfully cathartically fun – and made a decision not to include women in the game because he thought few women would be playing it anyway, and that it would only make things worse for those women who would. Like the female indie dev said – most women don’t play this kind of “core” game – and if they do, they don’t care about having a female character model, or need to hear a female voice choking on her own blood or watching her head roll down a hill.

We’ve seen in the last few weeks that the point of a lot of video game “journalism” isn’t to rate or review games, it’s to allow smug jackasses to benefit themselves financially and to lord their own moral superiority over the very people they profess to be writing for. It’s self-congratulatory social justice leftism on a holier-than-thou crusade to tell you, the gamer, that you suck – the same thing we see on a larger scale in society, but less rapid and less visible.

The short version is that a few weeks ago, a man who was cheated on posted a long, long blog post about how his ex-girlfriend had used him, cheated on him, and all around mistreated him horribly (including raping him by her own definition).

Turns out that woman was a game developer. And of the five guys she’d cheated on her boyfriend with, it seems a few, if not all of them, were pretty big in the video game journalism world at places like Kotaku (associated with Gawker), and that she used her relationships with them in order to get her games published and get other people crushed.

Add a little bit of social justice to it and the power of journalism directed to demonize anyone who disagreed with her as a sexist misogynist; as well as the ability to crush game events and redirect them to her own financial ends – and that being found to be a common practice in the incestuous world of social justice game journalism and indie game development, and you have the makings of a huge scandal.

InternetAristocrat explains it really well. Buckle in, it’s a long ride, but it’s a microcosm of the larger culture. The first video will give you an idea of the genesis of this, the later ones reveal more and more, but are probably the best way to get caught up on the story.

the ’50s — the Twinkie Era — do offer lessons that remain relevant in the 21st century. Above all, the success of the postwar American economy demonstrates that, contrary to today’s conservative orthodoxy, you can have prosperity without demeaning workers and coddling the rich.

Today’s conservative orthodoxy isn’t about either coddling the rich or demeaning workers. Bosses don’t get good results from employees who are hurt, and bosses who are favored by government (like Obama and bestest buddy Jeffrey Immelt from GE) means that there is no free market as the govt. picks winners and losers. A rising tide raises all boats.

Consider the question of tax rates on the wealthy. The modern American right, and much of the alleged center, is obsessed with the notion that low tax rates at the top are essential to growth. Remember that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, charged with producing a plan to curb deficits, nonetheless somehow ended up listing “lower tax rates” as a “guiding principle.”

Yet in the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91, that’s right, 91 percent, while taxes on corporate profits were twice as large, relative to national income, as in recent years. The best estimates suggest that circa 1960 the top 0.01 percent of Americans paid an effective federal tax rate of more than 70 percent, twice what they pay today.

And here we’re going to begin the misty-eyed dreaming of days gone by from the leftist perspective. Lower tax rates at every level are necessary for growth. Lower tax rates at the top free up capital, and stability in government and politics establishes confidence in business owners to go out and expand their businesses, leading to more and better paid employees. The current administration’s populist “eat the rich” attitude is something that’s setting back business development, and their fickle and flawed creation of a socialist health care system is causing businesses to respond to that uncertainty as well.

The tax rates of the 1950s, with a lot of analysis, could also be looked at as why the economy didn’t develop even faster. Let’s keep in mind that there were still bureaucrats from the FDR era in government, and the government was still busy being huge, still impacted in size by WWII and going off to Korea to fight another war as well. Also, ask what amount of those rates were actually paid versus what the rates were.

Nor were high taxes the only burden wealthy businessmen had to bear. They also faced a labor force with a degree of bargaining power hard to imagine today. In 1955 roughly a third of American workers were union members. In the biggest companies, management and labor bargained as equals, so much so that it was common to talk about corporations serving an array of “stakeholders” as opposed to merely serving stockholders.

Squeezed between high taxes and empowered workers, executives were relatively impoverished by the standards of either earlier or later generations. In 1955 Fortune magazine published an essay, “How top executives live,” which emphasized how modest their lifestyles had become compared with days of yore. The vast mansions, armies of servants, and huge yachts of the 1920s were no more; by 1955 the typical executive, Fortune claimed, lived in a smallish suburban house, relied on part-time help and skippered his own relatively small boat.

Putting burdens on businessmen ignores that that’s also putting burdens on the business. Also keep in mind that the character of the nation was different then. In 1955, unions hadn’t become as bad as they are today, with things like “job banks“:

One of the benefits negotiated by the United Auto Workers was the former jobs bank program, under which laid-off members once received 95 percent of their take-home pay and benefits. More than 12,000 UAW members were paid this benefit in 2005

Union sloth is legendary, but the character of the country also worked against it in those days.

Executives weren’t the only ones relatively impoverished.

The average American in 1955 wasn’t very well off, either. The were better off than in the Depression (some of them), and they were better off than when they were conscripted, but they weren’t well off. Consider this (pulled off the net in 2 seconds):

Right now, I’m sitting typing at a computer that can instantly communicate with millions of people across the world, with processing power unimaginable in 1955. If you’re reading this, it’s most likely also on an incredibly powerful computer that would still be deep in the realm of science fiction for 1955, or even reading it on a handheld tablet, phone, or some other device that could not exist in 1955.

Right now, the average American wage is around $43,000, hardly a trifiling amount. A new car in 2011 can run you as low as $13,600… of course, that’s before taxes and government fees. Let’s say you don’t want a Kia as a price point even, and would prefer something made by an American-owned company. You can get a Ford Fiesta for around $14,200, before the government gets involved with tax, title, and license fees. Now the average cost might be a little higher, but the substantive cost is very different. The lowest-grade car you can find today has technological advances that did not exist in 1955. The Fiesta gets 29 mpg on a bad day. A car from 1955 would be running in the 10s for fuel efficiency. And how about safety?

Going back to the car really quickly, the $1900 for a car translates to $16,399. So you can still afford an average car or light SUV that will last much, much longer than an old car, will require less maintenance, get better mileage, be safer with regards to crash ratings and brakes and belts and airbags, and provide features like power windows, AM/FM/CD/aux jack radio, AIR CONDITIONING, and other features that simply didn’t exist in 1955, or were prohibitively expensive.

Krugman’s desire to see the US reduced to the 1950s ignores a massive substantive increase in quality of life as he tries to reduce the rich to groveling at the temple of the state.

The data confirm Fortune’s impressions. Between the 1920s and the 1950s real incomes for the richest Americans fell sharply, not just compared with the middle class but in absolute terms. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, in 1955 the real incomes of the top 0.01 percent of Americans were less than half what they had been in the late 1920s, and their share of total income was down by three-quarters.

Why are lower incomes for anyone a good thing? There was also a depression in the 1930s and there was that war thing in the 1940s, and the 1920s were a time of prosperity. By the 1950s, there were still two decades worth of monetary policy damage and war costs being recovered from.

Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants and yachts are back, bigger than ever — and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of “socialism.” Indeed, the whole Romney campaign was based on the premise that President Obama’s threat to modestly raise taxes on top incomes, plus his temerity in suggesting that some bankers had behaved badly, were crippling the economy.

Yes, for many reasons. Eating the rich is foolish. They’re the most prosperous in society, often for good reason. They produce things – often capital for others’ ideas, but often the ideas themselves. Consider this guy:

He makes some music that lots of folks really, really like. His music talents and his ability to spot others with musical talent has led him to becoming a very, very rich man. He’s worth $460,000,000. Half a billion dollars.

If Jay-Z were taxed at a 91% rate, however, what would his music empire be worth? If every year, rather than be able to reinvest in new promotions, reinvest in new shows, put money down to back new artists, or even to just lavishly spend stuff on himself, which improves those who provide luxury goods, how much poorer would we as a nation be? Maybe that last phrase is a bit over the top for somebody who’s a rapper, but consider that his money is spent somewhere, it goes somewhere, it’s reinvested somewhere, and there are a lot of people whose lives do depend or are at least influenced by, whether directly or indirectly, how much he makes and spends. And not just the champagne producers. Every small venue that hosts somebody he promotes is making money, the sound and lighting guys at those venues are getting paid because the venue’s full, everybody who’s making merchandising and t-shirts and everybody who’s providing concessions to the shows – that’s a lot of income and improvements in life that come from one man’s large amount of wealth being directed back into his own business.

Surely, then, the far less plutocrat-friendly environment of the 1950s must have been an economic disaster, right?

Actually, some people thought so at the time. Paul Ryan and many other modern conservatives are devotees of Ayn Rand. Well, the collapsing, moocher-infested nation she portrayed in “Atlas Shrugged,” published in 1957, was basically Dwight Eisenhower’s America.

Yes, Eisenhower’s America, where individual wealth was confiscated and ideas were confiscated and man was forced to serve man under the cruel collectivist boot of the state. /sarc Krugman, you’re an idiot, and have clearly never read the book (then again, Paul Krugman doesn’t read his own books, so who knows). Krugman, please watch:

Strange to say, however, the oppressed executives Fortune portrayed in 1955 didn’t go Galt and deprive the nation of their talents. On the contrary, if Fortune is to be believed, they were working harder than ever. And the high-tax, strong-union decades after World War II were in fact marked by spectacular, widely shared economic growth: nothing before or since has matched the doubling of median family income between 1947 and 1973.

“Strange to say?” Krugman’s worldview is so warped he doesn’t understand, and perhaps can’t understand.

The decades after World War II were because war-footing ended. The decades after World War II were because World War II ended the idiotic New Deal. The New Deal is what caused the Great Depression – governmental policies that established uncertainty in markets, governmental policies that picked winners and losers, governmental policies that sucked up the labor force into the CCC and other make work programs while simultaneously draining the rest of society and screwing up monetary policy.

The 1950s were a recovery from FDR years. They were a recovery from a decade of the New Deal and the war years. There was much to be improved on yet, but rest assured, 91% tax rates do not spur people to work harder.

Which brings us back to the nostalgia thing.

There are, let’s face it, some people in our political life who pine for the days when minorities and women knew their place, gays stayed firmly in the closet and congressmen asked, “Are you now or have you ever been?” The rest of us, however, are very glad those days are gone. We are, morally, a much better nation than we were. Oh, and the food has improved a lot, too.

Let’s see… people in political life who want minorities to know their place…

Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of the KKK

And women to know their place…

Democrat Ted Kennedy’s car that he drowned Mary Jo Kopechne in… as he left her and went back to a party… and called his lawyer to figure out how best to proceed since he’d left her to die…

Krugman is just trolling here. The only people who agree with it, already agree with it. Those who look at it critically suddenly find his statements there, which are typical leftist slop, to be nonsense.

A couple paragraphs before he’s citing Ayn Rand, a female Russian Jew as an exemplar of right thought, and then suddenly women and minorities are supposed to “know their place?” I guess if their place is at the head of the table with ideas about equality based on character, then sure, absolutely.

As for the gay issue, there’s a difference between asking for special priviledges, special laws (hate crime laws are idiocy in many ways), and special treatment rather than asking for equal treatment (exercising equal rights prevents so-called “hate” crimes, too). Removing fedgov from marriage entirely, and leaving it up to religious organizations, would solve the issue entirely. And I’ve covered the issue with regards to the military before, which comes with a seperate set of problems that aren’t the same in regular society, and would make this long post even longer.

Moderator: What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists or International Socialist?

West: It’s a good question. I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party. It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Congressman West’s office responded to questions from CBSMiami.com with the following statement:

“The Congressman was referring to the 76 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Communist Party has publicly referred to the Progressive Caucus as its allies. The Progressive Caucus speaks for itself. These individuals certainly aren’t proponents of free markets or individual economic freedom.”

As for the food being better… being a leftist who wants to control people’s lives, Krugman probably believes the death of the Twinkie is a good thing, but even factoring that out, the reason food has improved has been due to the ideas and implementation of people in agribusiness and food industries. Those who put their money behind new technology from the 1950s to now, even such things as microwaves, tv dinners, frozen pizzas, organic arugula and whatever else – these things have improved not because of labor or high taxes, but because of those who push the ideas forward. (Yes, laborers contribute by doing the grunt work, but they don’t do the skull sweat as laborers… though some who do grunt work also do skull sweat. The two aren’t exclusive by any means.)

And we finally get to the last part of this fisking of Krugman’s current Keynesian idiocy… except today he’s a lot more socialist.

Along the way, however, we’ve forgotten something important — namely, that economic justice and economic growth aren’t incompatible. America in the 1950s made the rich pay their fair share; it gave workers the power to bargain for decent wages and benefits; yet contrary to right-wing propaganda then and now, it prospered. And we can do that again.

Economic justice is socialism. It’s the idea that everyone should be equal, and that the state should make them so. That’s not equal justice under the law, that’s the demand for “justice” for the proletariat raging against the bourgeoisie; defining a caste system by economic income, pitting man against man, rather than acknowledging that everyone in their own capacity as an individual can earn and live as best they earn.

America in the 1950s was still influenced heavily by decades of powerful progressive politicians, and “their fair share” is quite subjective. Fair in the use of “fair share” is typically taken as “marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism”. Not as in “that’s a fairly stupid thing to say, Krugman”, which would be fair in this definition: “moderately numerous, large, or significant <takes a fair amount of time>.”

Krugman, who ends by saying “right-wing propaganda” immediatly preceeds it with the union fairy tale of “gave workers the power to bargain for decent wages and benefits”. Workers always have the power to bargain. Person A selling Person B his labor in exchange for a wage and/or benefits is exercising his freedom as an individual to sell his skills at the highest level. Person B can take it or leave it, as can Person A, both free from interference. When Person B wants to pay for Person A’s labor, and Persons J,K,L,M, and O all are threatening Person B, suddenly Person A and B don’t have good footing to work anymore. Persons J,K,L,M, and O are busy telling Person B that they own Person B’s capital that Person B wants to pay for Person A’s labor with because they work at Person B’s shop. Now Person B can’t even hire Person A because he’s busy fighting with Persons J,K,L,M, and O, who have formed a gang against Person B… and against Person A.

Or let’s assume Person B and J,K,L,M, and O get along fine. Well when Person A shows up, he’s the junior guy. J,K,L,M and O get favorable treatment, while Person A gets shafted, and has to pay J,K,L,M, and O in order to work. Person A loses part of his salary just to be able to work at Person B’s business. And Person A has to pay for Person O, who’s JKLM’s representative, to tell him not to work while they fight with Person B.

Now, let’s assume there’s Person C. Person C is in a right-to-work state. Person C can see that Person A wants to work in B’s field. Person C offers a better rate to A than B can offer, and A doesn’t have to live under JKLMO anymore.

I’ve rambled a bit here (thanks for sticking with me, reader), but unions pit one group of workers against another. We’ve seen this just this last week in how the Teamsters union got screwed over by the Baker’s union. Normally it’s most easy to see in how the one man is isolated from the union, but here we have an even better example in how the Teamsters had reached a deal with Hostess, but te Bakers screwed them over and killed the company – and thus the Teamsters’ jobs are now gone.

Krugman’s entire piece is a vivid leftist fantasy about how eating the rich is great, how good unions are, and how big government is good. He’s a firm believer in Keynesian top-down economics (as has been detailed many, many times). His title of “The Twinkie Manifesto” is perhaps more appropriate than he thinks it is. It’s saccharine fluff for those who are already inclined to it, and distasteful to those who don’t like it.

I’m partial to Zingers myself.

As a final note here, and something I may make it’s own post (as this has gotten a bit long… though by fisking a “manifesto” it’s to be expected), an anecdote. My grandfather worked for a railroad for decades. In the 1950s, he was still working for the railroad, and the railroads are rather famous for their own unions, as well as having their own retirement programs that pre-date Social Security. Well, in this wonderful union world in which he worked, he would spend days after work at his house disassembling an old cistern in the backyard and breaking the bricks to make gravel for the driveway. In this rich, wonderful world of “decent wages and benefits”, my grandpa would take bricks from a broken cistern in the backyard at his house and break the bricks – by hand with a hammer – to make gravel for the driveway.

I’m not averse to hard work, but the 1950s economically were a relative improvement over previous decades. The Democrat economic issues Krugman brings up as good things to his mindset are just as abhorrent as bringing back Democrat racists and misogynists. We don’t need any of those ideas.

The nostalgic looks that many people have on the right are about going back to a time of much more moral certainty, and equality under the law. Communism was identified for what it was, a murderous statist ideology that killed millions. America was recognized for its greatness in allowing people freedom – which is why the struggle for civil rights came about, and often primarily driven by people on the Republican side of the house. Welfare was looked at derisively, hard work was a virtue (which also meant the character of unions, by their people, was different). The law was still respected, and though flawed, people sought to work to change it – again, the struggles of the civil rights era were about people defending themselves within the law. Civil disobedience works in a moral nation – not in an immoral one – and that’s why it did work in America, and improved the American condition.

No one wants to go back to cars with drum brakes and no seatbelts, no one wants to go back to black and white TV and no computers; no one wants to go back to segregation (though there are some places where it exists by choice of the residents, but that’s because of welfare and economic policies). No one wants to go back to the days when Democrat sheriffs, governors, mayors, congressman, and senators oppressed minorities and women. They do that enough today. Nobody wants government in their bedroom, and only the left wants discriminatory laws for different people.

And only self-named progressives want to go back to regressive, destructive taxes and powerful government controls.

During the presidential debates, Romney took a stance against Obama’s Apology Tour. Obama denied it, but as is expected of his administration, if it’s worth denying or covering up, it’s probably doubly true. Consider this piece from Commentary Magazine complete with quotes from top Obama advisors Samantha Power and Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Power wrote that America’s record in world affairs had been so harmful to the freedoms of people around the world that the United States could remedy the problem only through profound self-criticism and the wholesale adoption of new policies. Acknowledging that President Bush was correct in saying that “some America-bashers” hate the American people’s freedoms, Ms. Power stated that much anti-Americanism derives from the role that U.S. power “has played in denying such freedoms to others” and concluded:

U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling….Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When [then German Chancellor] Willie [sic] Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?

Thus, even at the beginning of the Bush presidency, Power saw Brandt’s apology for the Nazis’ destruction of European Jewry as the model for an American leader to seek pardon for the sins of U.S. foreign policy.

These are the advisors who went and pushed the World Apology Tour.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, of Princeton University, whom President Obama would later appoint as the State Department’s head of policy planning, likewise exhorted whomever would succeed President Bush to apologize for America’s role in the world. In a February 2008 article in Commonweal entitled “Good Reasons to be Humble,” she wrote:

[I]t will be time for a new president to show humility rather than just talk about it. The president must ask Americans to acknowledge to ourselves and to the world that we have made serious, even tragic, mistakes in the aftermath of September 11—in invading Iraq, in condoning torture and flouting international law, and in denying the very existence of global warming until a hurricane destroyed one of our most beloved cities….

[W]e should make clear that our hubris, as in the old Greek myths, has diminished us and led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

All this helps explain the remorseful tone of the Cairo speech. It also sheds light on Obama’s determination to set precedents and create institutional and legal constraints on the ability of the United States to take international action assertively, independently, and in its own particular interests. Without reference to this severely jaundiced view of American history, one cannot make any sense of the hesitation and meekness, the extreme deference to the Security Council and shyness about encouraging opponents of hostile dictators that have characterized the Obama administration’s policy toward Libya—and, for that matter, toward the anti-Assad-regime upheaval in Syria and, in 2009, toward the Green Movement anti-regime demonstrations in Iran.

Short short version: “America’s bad, m’kay.”

The blame-America first crowd has been writing American foreign policy. They soundly believe in their self-flagellating leftist egocentrism that not only does the world revolve around them, and the US, but that the US is the cause of all the world’s problems.

A few weeks ago and after much deliberation with myself concerning the following I have decided to let our readers in on a little conversation I had with a coworker on Facebook concerning Obamacare. I will also be providing some commentary (in bold italics) for the following comments in true Patriot Perspective style. In order to properly frame the following argument I will attempt to recreate the conversation with some heavy editing because some of the conversation is slang or “shorthand” with little or no punctuation involved with I will correct as best I can.

To begin I saw the following picture:

I couldn’t help myself so I made the following comment.

Me:

Healthcare isn’t a right gents….

Coworker:

Well we as Americans feed the beast that is health care, so now we should just let it eat the poor? And your already providing healthcare for probably half the country in uninsured ER visits and Medicaid! I came from a blue-collar family and my parents always had a job with health insurance I was lucky, sounds like you must have come from a similar situation. Talk to someone who had to go hungry because they got sick and if you can look them in the eyes and tell them healthcare is for well off people your wired different then me (my emphasis).

Notice the attempt to cause me to feel guilt? Also notice that this individual is propping themself up as a, “better than thou,” because my opinion is not his own.

Me:

I never said it’s for well off people. If someone wants the security of insurance they either need to find a better job that supplies it, or make some changes in their lifestyle such as getting rid of bills and stuff they don’t need and maybe buy some health insurance instead. It shouldnt be on me (and other hardworking folks) to provide someone else health care because they can’t or won’t work. I know it happens now, but when they take 50 or 60% of your paycheck how the hell are you supposed to live? And after they (the government) take money from all of us and give it folks who need it how long before there is no one else to produce the money so everyone who isn’t working gets their healthcare?

Coworker:

You are already paying for the people who don’t work. Wal-Mart has a human resource department to teach employees how to file for government assistance. These are working Americans, not lazy asses sitting around watching Jerry Springer, and a better job where at? Up and ups (I think he means people with money) and Halliburton can only hire so many people. Go to Bonham, Texas and look around go to Detroit and see how corporate America has left these people high and dry!

Another attempt to get me to “see” how he is right and I am wrong. Also the following picture is from Detroit, home of some of the most liberal (in a bad way) politicians in these United States.

Me:

Now I am paying for folks that don’t work. I also know that I don’t want to pay anymore. Where is the origin of debt? (Borrowed that from Andrew Wilkow, thanks Andrew!) Who decides that I owe somebody something? You? The government? If I came to your house every day and took half of the food out of your pantry for your kids to eat you wouldn’t be upset? What does Halliburton have to do with anything? Also Detroit has been run by liberals since the 1940’s that’s why it’s jacked up from entitlement programs. Because folks there sure don’t want to do anything to better their live. Why would they? They can just go get a handout. You tell me where the origin of debt is to pay for someone else’s healthcare, whether they work or not…. You show me the Constitutional authority for the government to order me to pay for anything that someone else can buy on their own.

I consider the above comments by myself to be rock solid. I provided this coworker the opportunity to completely shut my argument down here is the much-anticipated response.

Coworker:

That’s fine I got my house in order. If you can look in the mirror and shave knowing your just as greedy as the rest more power to you but I can’t (my emphasis).

Really? Did I ask about your house being order? I asked where the constitutional authority was for Obamacare. Once again notice the attempt at guilt and to position themself as better, more compassionate than myself. My response is as follows.

Me:

I’m not being greedy, I just want what I work for, and why not? It belongs to me doesn’t it? And you didn’t answer my question. Where is the origin of debt and where is the Constitutional Authority? If you can’t answer lets not resort to name calling or calling me greedy. After all, how can I be greedy if I just want more of the money I work for?

Pretty solid response to an illogical argument I think. But wait! There’s more.

Coworker:

And the people need help. Most of them work and pay taxes just like you … the working poor!

At this point I then decided to throw a link in with the cold, hard fact that close to 50% of people in the United States do not pay taxes.

I must admit the above comment confuses me still nearly two weeks later. I am not sure what my coworker means or which “key word” this individual is referring to.

Me:

Ok, not sure what you are saying to me there. It is fact 50+ percent (of people) do not pay taxes in this country, I think you need to reformulate your argument…. The point I am trying to make is most of those folks at Wal-Mart probably don’t pay into the IRS.

From here the conversation begins to end and seems to devolve especially on my coworkers side.

Coworker:

I don’t have time to argue this because I am going to work. The money I make today, I will pay taxes on don’t worry, I don’t need a tissue. I don’t mind paying taxes. I support a household of 5 with my income so 4 of the lazy no good tax dodgers in my house don’t have too (my emphasis)! Go back and look at your numbers, 50 percent! My spouse stays at home , they part of 50 percent along with my 7, 4, and 1-year-old kids. No it’s true they are the 50 percent!

Now the individual insult his own family members calling them tax dodgers? Three of them are children and a stay at home wife. Even saying they are part of that 50% isn’t correct. No they may not pay taxes, its true, however, they do have healthcare coverage courtesy of this individuals hard work. Also this person says that they don’t have a problem with paying taxes. Guess what fellow coworker, I don’t mind either, I just want to ensure that my money is used by the government Constitutionally and not to pay for a service that people should pay for themselves. This was pretty much the end of the conversation, I closed it out with the following statement, mainly because of the liberal tendency to hate people whose opinions to resemble their own.

Me:

Look its nothing personal, and it is ok that you don’t agree with me. I am not mad at you or anyone else, I simply am proving my point of view and nothing else.

The above statement is the truth. I don’t have any issue with anyone that I get into discussions with. All I ask is that they prove to me that I am wrong. All this person above did was manufacture an epic fail in the logic department.